How Vineet Bhardwaj is architecting the future of Godrej Properties

Vineet Bhardwaj, Head-IT, Godrej Properties is pioneering the use of virtual and augmented reality in the real estate sector to give customers a look and feel of their propertySneha Jha | ETCIO | Updated: February 07, 2018, 16:27 IST

Technology is a moving target in the CIO’s binoculars. But when Vineet Bhardwaj came up against this classic conundrum, he zoomed in on the big picture. The secret, he reckons, is to invent the future by decoding the past. That’s just what Bhardwaj is doing at Godrej Properties. As the Head- IT for Godrej Properties he is transforming the national real estate company’s fragmented departments into a lean cohesive unit.

The process of reinventing the future has already been set in motion at Godrej Properties. Bhardwaj started off with the basic building blocks of an organization, its primary asset: data.

Unfortunately, for most organizations, much of this mission-critical information is not easily accessible to other stakeholders in the organization who have a need for it. Like all other organizations, Godrej Properties tend to collect data in small, isolated pools usually across different workgroups and business functions. So when they needed information to identify business trends, spot opportunities, pinpoint pain areas or problems, draw conclusions confidently and make intelligent decisions quickly, they drew a blank.

“One of the key challenges we faced as an organization was that critical information required for agile decision making lay scattered across the perimeters of our enterprise. The fact that it’s available in various formats and forms makes it difficult to get a holistic view at an Organisation level,” admits Vineet Bhardwaj, Head-IT, Godrej Properties.

“There are varied systems in place. Every business function has different systems to cater to their needs. Disparate systems generating excel reports - led to a lot of conflicting set of information. The creation of a simple sales report used to take one man-day and would get circulated only at the end of the day. Business stakeholders ran amok for information. Due to lack of a single/unified source of information, everyone used their own report format/source of information leading to confusion and chaos. In most of the review meetings, a lot of time was wasted in reconciling the numbers which different stakeholders would have drawn and everyone would try to prove that his/her number is right,” he further explains.

Bhardwaj found himself pressed in service to manage his organization's information resources more effectively. His practical solution: unified information architecture.

The project is targeted at putting isolated data together giving the stakeholders better access to a bigger pool of information. It offers a means of consolidating all the scattered information which will work as an effective tool for faster and smarter decision making.

Information is an asset only if the same can be accessed, understood and applied. UIA is all about bringing the entire gamut of information under one platform and provide the right information in the right format at the right time.

“We spent a lot of time with all the stakeholders in designing formats following the principles of ‘Begin with the end in mind’. There was a cross-functional team which was formed led by our CFO. -Having worked in several industries, creating an Information Warehouse for the Real Estate industry was the most complex, given the way real estate accounting is carried out,” he states.

The biggest success of any system implementation is decided by its usage and the IT department worked a lot on creating awareness and increase adoption of the new system. During the journey, they created many standard operating procedures for standardizing the data entry process and recording of transactions.

UIA is a long-term initiative. “A single version of truth is what we are trying to achieve. As of now, we have deployed some dashboards for the top management and the middle management. We want to use some best in class analytics platforms where NLP should also be possible. We want a self-service analytics. model,” he says.

As the information is available on click of a button, it gives management the much-needed agility for decision making. For Godrej properties, the Unified Information Architecture project will be the engine that will provide departments with a competitive edge through speedy information access.

Bhardwaj is keen to reinvent the future across the IT spectrum to help realize operational efficiency and bring in greater returns.

He is intent on utilizing mobile apps to improve business processes and increase the level of accessibility for customers. The need for a mobile app is to seamlessly connect and interact with customers, making it a valuable tool for the modern businesses. “Apps reduce costs of SMS messages and paper, newsletters etc.. We want to make our workforce more responsive, flexible and productive. In order to solve the productivity paradox, we have launched a series of mobility initiatives for the workforce. Mobile apps reinforce our brand by increasing visibility. The idea is to simplify communication by securely, instantly and directly messaging various stakeholders. Apps reduce staff workload considerably by way of information requests and phone calls,” he asserts.

Using mobile apps, the business development team searches for the land parcels and decides where to strike the deal. While people are on the move they can see which deals are in the pipeline and what’s the status of each deal. The app is integrated with google maps for better visibility and understanding.

Using mobility solutions, the safety audits have also been automated. “The entire safety audit has been automated in such a way that our safety officer can track the status of each and every audit from any place at any time. We have developed employee self-service apps to empower employees to claim their reimbursements, petty cash, raise IT query etc. We want to apply mobile apps across all our business processes,” he says.

The best way to predict the future, they say, is to reinvent it. Bhardwaj is leveraging technology to reinvent the customer service paradigm. With this thought, he launched the customer portal where customers can login and view details of their –dealings with us.

“For our tech-savvy customers’, a similar experience was provided through native apps on iOS and Android platforms. We are exploring artificial intelligence technology in the form of Chatbots. There is a spurt in the use of Chatbots, mainly to handle frequently asked queries and the live chat feature has been in existence for some time now. Having a 24X7 live agent chat feature works out to be very expensive as it requires multiple shift call center setup. Chatbots can certainly provide a big cost saving as we can provide 24X7 human-like chat experience without having to setup the backend call center setup. It also helps in standardizing the responses for the frequently asked questions which is not possible in human-driven chats,” he says.

While he is deploying AI for some common queries, he is sensitive to the fact that personal touch can’t be replaced by machine as machines cannot understand emotions and feelings. Godrej Properties is in the process of deploying a chatbot for its internal and external clients. The bot will have to undergo a strong Quality Assurance (QA) check before it goes into production. The chatbots will be designed on a common framework and all the data from various chatbots will reside on one platform. The analytics layer on top will give various themes and tracks that otherwise would have gone unfounded. Godrej Properties will be the pioneers in real estate sector to deploy chatbots.

Bhardwaj takes a keen interest in any technology that improves the overall customer experience in real estate. In order to tap international customers, Godrej Properties is looking to plug the imagination gap through the use of virtual and augmented reality. This gives them a new way to experience properties and nearby locations.

The best way to predict your future is to create it. That’s what savvy CIOs are doing today. They are deploying new age technologies to reinvent the future. Vineet Bhardwaj, Head-IT, Godrej Properties is one such visionary IT leader. ETCIO is organizing the Economic Times CIO Annual Conclave 2018, dedicated to CIOs who are embarking upon an exciting journey of Inventing the Future through digital transformation. Here’s your chance to meet the best and brightest IT minds in the country. Click here for more details." ETCIO ITF2018"

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